Finally, Joshua F. Speed, his old and confidential friend, who had been invited to the meeting, said, “I have heard the opinion of your Ministers, and would like to hear yours.”
“Well, Josh,” replied President Lincoln, “when I was a boy in Indiana, I went to a neighbor’s house one morning and found a boy of my own size holding a coon by a string. I asked him what he had and what he was doing.
“He says, ‘It’s a coon. Dad cotched six last night, and killed all but this poor little cuss. Dad told me to hold him until he came back, and I’m afraid he’s going to kill this one too; and oh, “Abe,” I do wish he would get away!’
“‘Well, why don’t you let him loose?’
“‘That wouldn’t be right; and if I let him go, Dad would give me h—. But if he got away himself, it would be all right.’
“Now,” said the President, “if Jeff Davis and those other fellows will only get away, it will be all right. But if we should catch them, and I should let them go, ‘Dad would give me h—!’”
FATHER OF THE “GREENBACK.”
Don Piatt, a noted journalist of Washington, told the story of the first proposition to President Lincoln to issue interest-bearing notes as currency, as follows:
“Amasa Walker, a distinguished financier of New England, suggested that notes issued directly from the Government to the people, as currency, should bear interest. This for the purpose, not only of making the notes popular, but for the purpose of preventing inflation, by inducing people to hoard the notes as an investment when the demands of trade would fail to call them into circulation as a currency.